Title

Authors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2015

Department

Women's & Gender Studies

Language

English

Publication Title

Body Politics – Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte

Abstract

Contemporary narratives about fatness focus incessantly on the mother, yet recent fat studies literature has only slightly addressed this phenomenon of motherblame and fat stigma. By extending the research that I touched upon in Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (New York University Press, 2011), this essay explores the roots of motherblaming in early 20th century psychology— particularly in the work of Hilde Bruch and Phillip Wylie—and the connections to more recent narratives in US film, literature and popular culture that link mothers to the horrific spectacle of the fat child and fat mothers to the destruction of their families and communities.